David Reed, Conservative MP for Exmouth and Exeter East since 2024, holds one of the most physically distinctive backgrounds in Parliament and one of its most precarious mandates. He won by 121 votes, the smallest Conservative majority in England.

Born in Carshalton, south London, in December 1989, Reed joined the Royal Marines straight from sixth form and trained at the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone, the base that now sits inside his constituency. He served seven years in the Marines and the Special Forces Support Group, deploying to Afghanistan in 2012, hunting pirates off the coast of Somalia, and helping evacuate British nationals from Libya during the Arab Spring. The headline "Royal Marine" undersells it: this is operational service across three theatres, not a ceremonial line on a record.

It gets more unusual. He was a parachutist on the Royal Navy Parachute Display Team and was selected for the Team GB wingsuit skydiving squad, competing in formation flying until a foot injury ended it. Few MPs of any party have represented their country in an extreme sport.

His second career was as deliberate as his first. After the military he took a first class degree in business and a master's in international security at the University of Bristol, ran his own company, worked in Parliament, and spent four years leading teams and budgets in cyber development across the public and private sectors before a senior management post at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence. Selected as the Conservative candidate in July 2023, he moved to East Devon, having previously been based there at Lympstone. The defence and security thread runs through everything.

The 2024 result was brutal arithmetic. Reed took the seat on 14,728 votes, 28.7 per cent, with a majority of just 121 over Labour on 14,607, while the Liberal Democrats took 22.2 per cent and Reform 13.8 per cent. On the new notional boundaries the Conservative vote fell 21.1 points from 2019. He holds the seat on barely a quarter of the vote, with Labour a hundred and twenty one votes behind and the Liberal Democrats within striking distance, which makes this a genuine three way marginal rather than a safe return.

In opposition he has leaned into his expertise. He serves as an Opposition Assistant Whip and Shadow Defence Whip, sits on the International Development Committee, is vice chair of the all party group on foreign affairs, and worked through the Armed Forces Bill committee. Locally he campaigns on the Dinan Way extension in Exmouth, Bridge Road in Exeter, South West Water's sewage record and rail resilience, the bread and butter of holding a knife edge seat.

At 36, Reed pairs one of the most striking CVs in the Commons, Royal Marine, wingsuit competitor, first class graduate and cyber executive, with one of its thinnest mandates. The defence brief and the Lympstone connection give him a credible niche, but an opposition MP cannot deliver the funding his campaigns demand. Whether expertise and visible local graft can convert 121 votes into something durable, or whether the seat reverts at the first swing, is the question that defines him.